Cincinnati Reds TV Ratings UP in 2018

The Cincinnati Reds saw their television ratings go UP in the 2018 season. All of that despite failing to win 70 games in a season for the fourth straight season, and getting out to a 3-15 start. Attendance at the ballpark was at the lowest it’s been since 1984. Perhaps those who still wanted to watch simply chose to not make the trip to Great American Ballpark and watched at home.

Maury Brown posted the ratings for each team in Major League Baseball over at Forbes.com. Ratings were up for Major League Baseball as a whole by 2%. The Cincinnati Reds ratings were the 10th best in baseball, getting a 4.23 rating. That’s an average of 37,000 people watching per game on television. That number, however, is only 24th of the 29 teams (Toronto is excluded). That’s the Reds market size at play – there just aren’t enough eyeballs available. The Yankees, for example, got lower ratings (3.91), but blew away everyone else in baseball by averaging 277,000 people watching per game on television. No other team in baseball was within 100,000 viewers per game.

For the Reds, they were the #1 show on cable within the greater Cincinnati market. They were the #2 show on all television. In 2017 they were #1 among cable shows and #3 overall. The rating itself was up by 6% by comparison to the 2017 season.

Here’s a fun note from Brown’s article:

The Reds generate more viewing in Cincinnati than the top eleven primetime shows combined.

There are, of course, 162 games for the Cincinnati Reds to show. To compare that amount of programming to the top eleven shows isn’t a 1-to-1 comparison. Each game lasts about 3 hours. While no other program is going to be more than two hours. Still, it’s an impressive feat.

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18 Responses

How do major league teams pay their players during the post season? Do they all get paid the same rate/game? Do only the players on the playoff roster get paid? Or all those who travel with the team? Do you know the amount? Thanks

Carlos, I genuinely don’t understand where your rudeness and negativity comes from? It’s a free site, and Doug puts in countless hours to bring us information and insight into so many different Reds topics that often aren’t discussed by other sites. Please keep your sad, negative comments to yourself, and go on with your miserable life.
Doug, I’m a subscriber, and still feel guilty for only paying the small fee you charge monthly. If you were to quite writing, Many of us would lose something we look forward to daily. Thank you again for all you hard work.

Don’t know if you have ever participated in a ratings viewing poll, but they want to know if you DVRed a show and then when you watched it. I am sure satellite companies can monitor that stuff as well.

This shows what a joke that the Reds and baseball continues to pull on Reds fans.
The Reds are a top 10-15 TV market in reality. These only show the Cincinnati market which is not the true TV market for the Reds. The reds market is actually the area that Fox sports ohio shows the Reds games. The amount of households is the area that can get Reds games is one off the largest in baseball. The Reds have Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky/West Virginia and parts of Tenn. This is a highly populated area.

Using Cincinnati for attendance makes sense for it being a small market for revenue.

I’m not sure how you can say that the Reds have all of these other states as part of their market. There is competition from other teams in all of these states with KY being the most likely to lean toward Cincinnati. Both the Cubs and the Tigers have big followings in Indiana. When I spent time in northwest Ohio I was amazed to see how much interest there was in Detroit sports. And obviously Ohio itself is split between Cincinnati and Cleveland. That doesn’t mean the Reds don’t draw from the states that you mention – just that I don’t believe you can lump those entire regions into a “Cincinnati” market.

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